The image of Osama bin Laden was well-used in the world of advertising, particularly foreign advertising. As the architect of Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, bin Laden was an easy stand-in for anything an advertiser wanted to signify as "bad."
The beard, turban, robes and flak jacket formed an iconic shorthand for agencies to utilize without having to use words, making bin Laden especially useful as a symbol in countries with low levels of literacy, or with many different languages. Bin Laden's look was so distinctive that using him in an ad was invariably an unsubtle move, and thus ads using Osama tend to be not very good.
Bin Laden rarely, if ever, appeared in U.S. ads, where the World Trade Center attack is considered beyond the pale. Elsewhere, though, he cropped up with surprising frequency -- promoting email services, Samsung, package delivery companies, Halls cough drops, and the Discovery Channel. His death will be unlikely to put an end to the use of his image in marketing. It didn't work for Hitler, after all.
Here's a look at bin Laden's career as celebrity pitchman to date:
